The first fellow he started for was Hughie. Just then Hughie winked at him, and he stopped and looked at McGrew. McGrew was laughing and so were all the rest, for by this time the room had filled up with old graduates, and it suddenly began to filter through Hal’s brain that this was one of those harmless practical jokes that he had heard about. He thought it was cruel, of course, but McGrew said he had heard a lot about Hal and among other things it was said that he was so even tempered that he wouldn’t fight with anybody, and they wanted to see what it would take to make him fight. They were satisfied now that he could be depended upon to fight at the drop of the bat, whenever there was anything worth fighting about.
Then they showed him that each fellow on the graduates team had a type-written copy of the signals, anyhow, furnished by Hughie. That was one of the rights which every player on the Alumni team could enjoy for one day in the year. The old graduates’ club was expected always to win its game with the Varsity, and how on earth would they have any show against these modern Lowell teams, with their inside baseball and their new trick plays, if they didn’t have the signals?
Then they all shook hands with Hal and told him he was a member of the “Tried and True Club” of Lowell, and made him understand that this was an honor very rarely given to a freshman, but that they wanted him to have it because of the wonderful work he was doing as a first baseman. When he shook hands with McGrew, however, he got another bump.
“Better give me back my one hundred and twenty-five dollars now, old boy. I suppose you have it with you.”
Hal thought of his half of the story money which had come from the magazine, and it was in his trousers pocket that moment. Was this another one of their jokes, and how did they know he had it, was what he thought. What he said was, “What do you know about my one hundred and twenty-five dollars, brother,” and they all laughed at Hal’s quick guess this time.
“Well,” said Fielder James, “you don’t know perhaps that I am connected with the Out Door Weekly, but the other boys do. The editor, knowing that I was coming up here, showed me a story in a recent issue of the magazine and asked me to look up the author of the story, Harold Case, and arrange with him for some more of them. I had seen your name mentioned in the Reporter every week, but I didn’t connect you with the author chap, because they have called you Hal lately in the paper. So when I arrived I was looking for Harold Case, the author. I found only one person in the town by that name, yourself, so I asked my friend, Jimmie Hamilton, the cashier of the bank, to help me find the author, he having been here for twenty years, and I told him why.
“He said it must have been you, as you were in the bank a few days before cashing a check from the Out Door Weekly for two hundred and fifty dollars, and dividing it with Hagner. He saw you give some of it to Hagner, and then Hagner deposited one hundred and twenty-five dollars to his own credit in the bank and he guessed you must have divided with him. That was the first time I got the idea that Hans might have been a real live person, because in the college news he is of course referred to as Hagner. We just guessed you probably had the one hundred and twenty-five dollars in your pockets, and so we arranged the practical joke to fit what we knew. Now is it a real story or not?”
“Let’s go and ask Hans,” was all Hal would say. When they did get to Hans they made him tell the whole story over and McGrew said, “If you come to New York again let me know and I’ll lend you my auto.”
Hal was happy. It meant a great deal to him to be recognized by these older graduates as their equal, and he had a right to be happy. It was recognition of his merit by those whose opinion was valuable, because they had enough practical experience of the world to enable them to recognize true worth. None of the other Freshmen on the team were let into the secret of how the old graduates were able to beat them so badly. They marveled at the fact that the old timers were on to every play that the boys attempted, and they had a great respect for the old crowd that licked the Varsity that day by the one-sided score of 11 to 2.
But in the evening the old graduates’ club gave the team a little dinner at which this tradition of the university was explained for the benefit of the other youngsters, Hans, Ty, Tris and Radams, Ross and Huyler. Then they were all initiated into the mysteries of the Lowell O. K. Club, which meant that the team had been inspected by the old boys who had won laurels for Lowell in the past, and was good enough in their minds to go against Jefferson.